(Images by Kalle Gustafsson for The Rake)

Henry Cavill sounds butcher than a testicle for The Rake's cover story, but whether or not that rubs you the right way, the shots are eye candy ...

Via The Rake: First off, the article stresses his patriotism, a weird thing to dwell on:

As you will know, dear reader, the dwindled British empire, which once had dominion over a quarter of the globe, is now made up of randomly dispersed islands. One of the nearest to Britain is Jersey, and this is the ancestral island of our cover star. Jersey has always had a French connection to it, but the Cavill family is aware and proud of its mainland roots. “My parents raised me and all my brothers as British, very British,” Cavill says. “My mother is Scottish and Irish, and my father is English. It has always been a matter of being proud to be British. It isn’t about turning your nose up at the rest of the world, it’s just that we are an island that, despite all the odds, managed to survive all the other empires of history and became the largest empire itself, and has still survived to be a world power. I think my parents just bred it into me to be proud, and I am.” It is an unfashionable stance in a world in which patriotism and racism are too easily linked, where enjoying the Last Night of the Proms or singing the national anthem with gusto is a guilty secret, lest you be sneered at.

Hm. Not feeling that.

But he has a nifty story of being a dweeb in school:

“I look back and think, Thank God people were such dicks to me at school, because it taught me an awful lot about people. As soon as the girls arrived — and I was not popular — all the cool guys would tell them I was a knob. All the girls turned on me and then all the guys who were my friends went for the girls. I had a handful of friends but it really surprised me. I was like, ‘Wow, you totally turned on me to be cool, in front of those girls’.” This habit, his self-effacement, cropped up a few times in the interview: later on, when I asked whether fame and appetite for success had helped overcome a sense of not being accepted at school, his response was honest and analytical. “Yes, there is something to do with school, I definitely get a sense of vindication,” he says. “But I have battled with that because that is an ego-based thing, a negative side to the ego that is ultimately doing nothing but destroy.” Here is a man not interested in victimhood or dwelling in pain; rather, growing from it.

The rest of the piece is in The Rake Issue 54, on sale now.